Greek cheese pies (and how to fold a flag)

Ingredients:

• 200 gr feta cheese
• 1 pack filo pastry (200 gr) (you can find it in Sainsbury' s)
• 2 eggs
• black pepper
• dry spearmint
• sunflower oil
• kitchen paper
  

Grate all the feta cheese in a deep bowl.
Add the two eggs (white + yolk) , some black pepper and some spearmint. The amount of black pepper and spearmint is your choice :)
NB: If you don't have spearmint then just add black pepper.

Fill of the cheese pies:
Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl using a fork. Don't use force. You want to mix them not flatten them!

Filo preparation:
Clean some space on a flat surface and lay the filo pastry.
NB: The filo pastry that is not being used, should be covered with a clean kitchen towel so that it doesn't become dry.
Use a sharp knife to cut the filo in half along its length so that you have stripes of 5-6 cm width and approximately 30 cm length.

Cooking:
Put some sunflower oil in a frying pan and heat it. You don't need to put a lot. Perhaps 1 mm depth.
With the fork take a small amount of the fill, add it on the edge of a filo stripe and start folding the pastry as you would fold a flag (see Fig. 1 bellow) until you have a triangle.

Fold a cheese pie:



Repeat this with each stripe and when you have the triangular cheese pies ready, reduce the fire to minimum and place them on the frying pan. Be aware as they cook very fast so you will need to turn them as soon as you see them becoming golden at the bottom. When they are ready, place them on a plate on top of which you will have laid some kitchen paper that will soak the excessive oil.



The oil in the frying pan must be quite hot when you put them to cook, but while cooking them the fire must be low. You want to make sure that the egg is cooked and that the pies are golden and not black!

It is likely that you will not use all the filo that is in the 200 gr pack. In that case, fold the remaining filo and cover it with some cling film as it was when you opened it, so that it is not in contact with air. Store it in the fridge.

Enjoy the cheese pies.